The importance of building relationships for our modern day coaches

Firstly, I hope this blog post finds you, your family and friends in good health; this is strange times and new territory for us all and I hope we can follow the advice of health professionals and leaders of our countries to “flatten the curve” and keep our communities safe and well, including all our athletes, coaches and administrators involved in our respective sports. I wanted to look at and discuss a few articles I’ve shared earlier this year, looking at Ronan O’Gara’s transition to coaching plus how coaching techniques and certainly the importance of coach-athlete relationships have increased with our new age players.

Irish international O’Gara admitted that towards the end of his career and with an eye on transitioning into coaching roles, he began to pay close attention to player-coach relationships, how training sessions and reviews were organised and he took a more holistic look at the squad, rather than just focusing entirely on his own game.  In his two seasons at New Zealand’s Crusaders side - both of which ended with Super Rugby titles - backs coach O'Gara saw how Robertson delegated to his coaching staff, empowered players and sought to build up personal relationships within the entire organisation. He is quoted as saying:

“Everything is about the squad. The one direction I got from Razor was basically - he trusted me in my unit work - saying, ‘You’ve just got to connect with your players’. Everything was about connections - coffees, chats, discussions, growing ideas - but they present [ideas to the team].

It just empowers them. They take the responsibility. Their play. When they’re under the pump, they’ve got to find solutions on the pitch. Rugby isn’t played on a laptop. So many coaches think it is. You have 80 minutes of live rugby; they’re not robots. That’s the most important thing for me.”

Crusaders head coach Scott Robertson seems to intuitively understand the importance of social inclusion, relatedness to his athletes and displaying emotional intelligence through supportive actions, and in trun has taught O’Gara some valuable lessons. Talking of his time, having left NZ’s Crusaders and now with France’s La Rochelle, he mentioned how he has developed as a coach and a moderately tempered person:

“Spending time in the company of some rugby greats – Read, Crotty, Whitelock – validates the sense that you can communicate and connect with people.
The environment I talk in now on a daily basis at La Rochelle invites challenge. Fifty brains are a lot stronger than one brain, so I always say ‘I need your input boys’.
The days of coaching dictators are gone, but the happy medium between feedback and a final decision must be clear and unambiguous.
I’ve had players say ‘I think we could do that a little bit differently, I think we could do that a little bit better’. You’ll always engage and encourage that.”

These reports coincide with a study released early 2020 by the University of Bath where Dr Shaun Williams and Andrew Manley found the emphasis on performance data is producing mechanical players and taking away instinct, emotion and unpredictability from the sport (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jan/09/the-breakdown-rugby-union-numbers-game).

They interviewed 10 players, a coach and an analyst from a Premiership club for their paper, finding that the approach from the top was data-driven, with players gaining or losing a new contract through key performance indicators, and a work efficiency index based on an individual’s contribution in games. The concern amongst many in the English game in particular is how the professional system, starting with academies, is producing players who lack dimension, used to being told what to do and regimented, making them more comfortable executing a game-plan rather than reacting when a game is slipping away. Dr Williams stated:

“Coaching should be educational for players, not controlling. The knowledge coaches have now tends to be procedural, how to go from A to B based on technical expertise. They are mimicking the cultures they have been part of and there is a cost to players in terms of happiness because data causes fear and resentment and leads to a psychological grind. And so the game becomes more predictable and formulaic and less entertaining”

Combining these reports and ideas, the main theme I see and feel is the importance of coach-athlete relationships and combining tactical and technical development within socially dynamic situations. Galinsky and Maddux’s research to sporting context recognises that “taking perspective of (player) produced both greater joint gains and profitable individual outcomes”. In a sports context, this would be seen as close and meaningful coach-athlete relationships, regular player involvement in decision making processes with honest and accurate goal attainment for all involved, some ideas O’Gara tested and developed during his time in Canterbury and areas that would develop skills shown to be lacking from University of Bath’s research. The main aspects of influential and successful coach-athlete relationships revolve around ideals such as mutual trust, respect, support, cooperation, communication and understanding of each other and impact of each other within the relationship. Both performance enhancement and psychological well-being is deeply engrained within the coach-athlete relationship; for example, studies have shown that athlete satisfaction is related to the degree to which athletes understand their role and responsibilities within interactive sports teams. (Eys, 2007). Coaches need to acknowledge and recognise the effects of positive, interdependent relationships, which are dynamic and interlinked with cognition, feelings and behaviours to achieve common recognised goals (Jowett, 2007). Therefore, a coach’s ability to acknowledge and develop positive interpersonal connections, driven by interpersonal skills and united sense of purpose and achievement, can offer solid base for positive relationships and learning atmospheres.

The challenge of successful coaching is acknowledging social interactive dilemmas within individual and team goal setting and development, offering suitable scenarios and choices with all members’ involvement and collaboratively dealing with matters as opposed to eradicating them. Past research by Mageau and Vallerand regards the “actions of coaches as (possibly) the most critical motivational influences within sport setting”. Coaching should be recognised as an educational dynamic relationship, where the coach can satisfy player’s goals and development but both sides have an investment of will capital, where human initiative and intentionality are both dedicated to show commitment towards goals and relationships, themes defiantly identified as missing from Dr William’s research. The role of performance coaches such as O’Gara for professional, HP athletes is highly important; coaches are “preparing athletes for consistent high-level competitive performance” (Côté, 2009a) through effective tactics such as integration of professional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal knowledge and developing player’s specific competence, confidence, connection, and character needs on regular basis. O’Gara certainly starts to indicate that he is beginning to acknowledge the roles of developing the player as a person and not solely as an athlete.

All coaching environments need to adopt and offer players ingredients for genuine motivation; mastery, autonomy and purpose. These ingredients are echoed within research conducted in sports coaching involving study of self-determination theory, which addresses innate psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Amorose supported that “the more athletes felt autonomous, competent and have sense of relatedness, the more reasons for participating were self-determined in future” (Amorose, 2007). Mallet researched and explained that “self-determination theory underscores the role of environment in fuelling people’s perceptions of (autonomy, competence and relatedness) in contexts of sport” (Mallett, 2005). We understand drive in most sporting participants is found from intrinsic motives; their internal desire to master their sports and challenge themselves through committed engagement in highly repetitive activities. So where do high performance coaches fit within developing these motives and creating dynamic, player driven learning environments?

Sports coaches of athletes should act as pedagogues and adopt comprehensive and holistic roles in the moral development of their athletes through their adopted and shared practices, languages and beliefs. If coaches are to develop knowledgeable athletes, capable of performing learned tasks when under pressure and not under direct instructions (again, different from identified English players in William’s research), I believe this shall require bidirectional transfer of knowledge or total ownership by athletes of their development, with support from the coaches as “more capable other”. Kidman’s research (2001) addressed ideas such as coaches developing player’s complex skills and tactical knowledge through encouraging abstract thought processes by asking high order questions, which require athletes to apply, analyse and synthesize information. This style of leadership has the coach steering as opposed to controlling decisions and actions, encouraging player discovery through evolutionary planning and organising of tasks whilst keeping sight of overall objectives and showing empathy to get the best from the athletes, something O’Gara identified as adopting with time and experience. Coaches acting as orchestrators whilst attempting to create a successful pedagogic setting requires coordination of activities to investigate, monitor and respond with honesty to players. This may require some transparency from coaches to offer rationale for processes. It may also require negotiation of processes with players to meet individual and collective performance measures of those being coached whilst matching evolving circumstances for learning and development against attempting keeping sight of overall objectives. Sounds like a lot of Robertson’s coffee dates to me….

Coaches like O’Gara need to engage on a significant and sincere level and teach our athletes or leaders to do likewise. In sport specific research, Chan and Mallett recognised that high performing coaches require additional skills including ability to facilitate functioning leader-follower relationships, revolving around emotional intelligence and empathy, beyond the standard technical and tactical skills (Chan, 2011). Jowett’s research into coach-athlete relationships looked at the interrelated emotions and behaviours captured through constructs of commitment, closeness and complimentary, tied in later studies with coordination (Jowett, 2004). In this sports research, commitment within coach-athlete relationships is recognised as intention to maintain a loyal, long term relationship while showing closeness as mutual trust, respect and appreciation for roles played in partnership. The coach’s and athlete’s ability to have mutual relatedness, common ground in beliefs and actions while having stress-free interpersonal behaviours displays coordination and complimentary aspects for successful coach-athlete relationships.

As we take time to socially distance, following the health professional’s guidelines, we should reflect and build our interpersonal skills to allow us to take time in future to better know and understand our athletes to gain a holistic view of involved players. The art of coaching is knowing how and when to communicate, and how this varies from individual. Work on empathetic relationships and having a better understanding of your athletes or players as this will allow you to modify your environment or approaches for greater impact and understanding. Know your players, know their story, know their context and then put it into practice.